Low Participation Rates on this Year’s Student Council Elections

The director announced the results of this year’s Student Council elections on May 24 at Maagdenhuis. Every Spring, students from the University of Amsterdam are invited to vote for the new Faculty Student Council and the Central Student Council members. The newly elected council members will commence their positions on September 1st, 2018.

While FSR members speak on behalf of the students from their faculty about the issues and policies with the dean, CSR members meet with the Executive Board and speak on behalf of all the students from UvA.

This year, the results were only available on the Dutch version of UvA’s website, which may explain the low interest or awareness students have towards the elections. With a small increase since last year, the participation remained relatively low; only 23.7 percent of participation, of which 386 of the votes where blank. Unexpectedly, the Faculties that did not put forth more than one party, had higher rates of participations. Indeed, the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences only had 12,6 percent of participation rate, and the Central Student Council 11,2 percent.

The results were the following:

Central Student Council

Out of the 14 members of the Central Student Council, 7 are elected directly by the students and 7 by the Faculty Student Councils. These memebers were divided as follows:

UvA Sociaal: 4 seats

De Vrije Student: 2 seats

Red UvA: 1 seat

Faculty Student Council

Amsterdam Law School

This year, there was a participation rate of 26,2 percent at Amsterdam’s Law School.

De Vrije Student: 1 seat

OpRecht: 6 seats

Inter: 5 seats

Economics and Business

This year, there was a 19,5 percent rate of participation for the Faculty of Economics and Business (FSR FEB UvA), which is 4 percent higher than last year.

List Sefa: 7 seats

UvA Sociaal: 3 seats

Faculty of Dentistry

This year, there was a 54,7 percent rate of participation for the Faculty of Humanities.

ACTA Beter: 8 seats

Faculty of Humanities

This year at the Faculty of Humanities, there was a 16,9 percent rate of participation.

TOF: 8 seats

De Vrije Student: 2 seats

Red UvA: 2 seats

Faculty of Medicine

This year, there was a 35,2 percent rate of participation for the Faculty of Medicine. Surprisingly, even though only one party participated in the elections, there were 16 blank votes out of 507.

MFAS: 7 seats

Faculty of Science

This year, there was a 19,9 percent rate of participation for the Faculty of Science.

LIEF: 7 seats

Patij Stout: 2 seats

SLAAFS: 2 seats

Malou Sprinkhuizen: 1 seat

Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences

There was a 12,7 percent rate of participation for the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences this year.

Isabel Bonnet is a 21-year-old second-year student in communication science at UvA. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Amsterdammer. Before its creation, she worked as a photo editor at the Independent Florida Alligator and did an internship at Le Monde.

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Isabel Bonnet is a 21-year-old second-year student in communication science at UvA. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Amsterdammer. Before its creation, she worked as a photo editor at the Independent Florida Alligator and did an internship at Le Monde.